by Kate Rudolph
The young man—and he was young, at least ten years younger than Stasia—hung his head and let out a shuddering breath before he looked up again and met her eyes. "I'm sorry. So sorry."
Maybe Stasia was supposed to forgive him, but how could she? She just nodded and that seemed to satisfy the kid. Good. She didn't have any more to give.
"Are you all werewolves?" Owen's heat was enough to burn, and maybe she should have pulled away from him if he was secretly a monster, but nothing about him made her think he was monstrous, even if he was a werewolf.
"We are," Gibson confirmed.
"Were you born that way?" Em asked.
Good question. She was so glad that Em had jumped in the car with them. She was going to need moral support soon, or at least Em's memory. Trauma had a way of messing with a person's head.
"No," said Gibson.
"Then shouldn't you know about the bite?" It hurt, and Stasia didn't want bullshit answers. She'd done a good deed, she'd saved a fucking life. She deserved to know the truth. Her boyfriend/bodyguard was apparently a werewolf, and he hadn't bothered to say a word about that. She'd been bitten by a freaking werewolf. And now they were playing word games. "Tell me what's going on."
There was a heavy silence in the room after Stasia's demand. She was worried no one would speak, but finally Owen broke the silence.
"It started two years ago in Germany."
Chapter Twenty
Two years ago
The last thing Owen remembered, he was going off the base. He wasn't sure why. But that was normal enough. He sure as hell hadn't meant to end up in the middle of a forest somewhere, his hands tied and in the middle of some strange ritual put on by devil worshipers.
Were they devil worshipers? Did devil worshipers actually exist?
He remembered hearing about them when he was a kid and he had thought it was all fake. But now he was in the middle of some magic looking circle and there was a guy wearing a black robe with animal pelts over his shoulders and they were surrounded by guards carrying wicked looking guns.
Would devil worshipers need guns?
His mind felt kind of spacey and his head ached. Had he been hit? That was very possible. He wanted to feel around for a wound, but with his hands tied he could barely move. And the tactical part in the back of his mind told him it would be a bad idea for the warlock in the middle of the circle to figure out that he was awake.
Warlock? Witch? Sorcerer? It was way too Lord of the Rings for him.
But whoever the magic man was, he wasn't paying attention to Owen right then, so Owen did his best to look around without squirming too much. And he wasn't the only person tied up.
He wasn't sure of the others’ names, though he was pretty sure the older guy was a freaking major. In fact, he thought he recognized everyone from the base. Abducting a handful of US soldiers off of an army base couldn't be easy, and it was pretty fucking suicidal. Did they think the Army was going to play? They would come in guns blazing to get their people back.
And this was Germany. It was supposed be safe. He had been psyched to get this assignment. Ending up tied up in the woods like he was playing a part in an old-fashioned fairytale was not how Owen expected things to go.
There were seven torches blazing all around them and the warlock was doing something on an altar in the middle of them. Was this human sacrifice? Owen's mom was going to freak out if she found out he was killed by human sacrifice. She was a good Catholic woman and no priest would be able to explain this.
The warlock turned to him, carrying a scary, shiny knife.
"You don't have to do this." This was the time to reason with him, if it was possible to reason with some kind of demon summoner out of one of Grimm's fairy tales.
The man didn't speak, his lips pulled into a terrifying smile with two sharp teeth. They didn't look human. Was he human? Maybe he was a demon.
"No, no, no!" Owen tried to struggle, but the man didn't pause. And he brought the knife down, but he didn't stab him. Instead he sliced a healthy stripe of skin on his chest, enough to sting and draw blood, but not enough to do much damage.
What the fuck? Then he caught some of the dripping blood in a metal cup of some kind. No, a chalice. That was the right name for a fancy magic cup.
The warlock or demon continued the ritual with each of the tied up soldiers. One of the guards stepped into the light and Owen got a good look at his face. He did his best to memorize it. If he got out of this thing, he wanted to come for these people. He wanted them to pay for whatever weird shit they were doing.
But the warlock was done with whatever strange task he was performing and he went back to the center of the circle.
He started to chant. Owen didn't have any special skill in languages, but he could recognize a few from being stationed around the world. This wasn't one he recognized. It didn't sound like anything that came from Earth. It was deep and guttural and it made his ears hurt.
The skin where he had been cut started to burn as the man kept chanting, and Owen had to be going crazy because it was like a light show started in front of his eyes. First it was blue light swirling around in circles, and he wondered if it was some kind of LED set up. But there was nothing technological out here. And then a red light joined it and the two lights danced in the air and circled like a cyclone.
The warlock's voice got louder and louder, and Owen was sure that his ears were starting to bleed. He lost sight of the guards, and it was as if they had drifted away into the dark of the forest to give the warlock privacy for this part of his ritual.
The warlock gave a cry and the blue and red lights burst up in a tower of energy before swooping down again and attacking Owen and his fellow prisoners.
He could feel the power with the force of a punch that knocked all of the air out of him.
He breathed in, but his lungs were on fire and the pain grew more and more until he couldn't take it anymore and he passed out.
He woke up, but he was sure he was dead.
Was this heaven?
Maybe not. He hoped not. The US Army owned his body, but he had never signed away his soul. And he recognized the uniforms all around them. It was a smaller squad than he would have expected. They were checking with him and his fellow prisoners, and there was a medic there to give them oxygen and make sure they stayed alive.
Looking around, it didn't look like anything had happened. There was no altar. No torches. No warlock. Owen's bindings had been released and he reached up to touch the cut on his chest, but it was gone.
A hallucination?
He didn't have that strong of an imagination.
Things had proceeded very fast after that and Owen barely had time to think.
He had years left on his contract, but politics had a way of screwing up anyone's career, and before long, Owen found himself discharged with healthy severance and orders to keep quiet about the whole thing.
The Army didn't want it getting out that soldiers had been abducted off of one of their bases. And if they had any idea about what had been done to them, they weren't saying.
That was when Owen got to know Major Gibson. The man came to him first as they were debriefing in the States and suggested that maybe it would be a good idea for them to stick together.
Yeah. They were the only people who understood what had really happened. Sticking together seemed like a good idea.
One year and nine months ago
It wasn't the full moon. It was night and the moon was big, but it wasn't full.
In the past three months, they had begun to put together a private protection company. Gibson had contacts and he was putting out feelers.
But they were spending a lot of time on his farm in Pennsylvania. And that night they were all outside in the chilly air sitting around a fire and roasting marshmallows.
Hunter felt it first. She stiffened where she sat, putting the stick she was using to char her marshmallow down.
"You okay?" asked Jackson. She
reached out a hand to squeeze Hunter's shoulder.
"I—" Hunter collapsed off the small bench she was sitting on and they all sprang into motion.
But what happened next was even stranger than the night in the German forest. Hunter screamed and pulled at all of her clothes until they sat in a heap next to her, and then her body started to shift, fur growing where it definitely shouldn't grow, face elongating until she had a snout, and teeth getting long and deadly.
She shifted to a wolf and howled.
And that howl was what it took for the change to rip through the rest of them.
Owen had no idea how long it took. It didn't hurt. Not that much. And once his body shifted from man to wolf, he didn't care about how it was impossible.
All he wanted to do was run.
And so they ran together, their first time as a pack.
And hours later, when they shifted back, none of them worse for wear, they huddled together and realized that whatever had been done to them in Germany was serious.
Present day
Owen looked down at Stasia and tried to read her face. He hated that he could still see the bandage from the stitched up bite on her shoulder. He could kill Vega for attacking her. It didn't matter that it wasn't the young man's fault. This was Owen's mate. He would die to protect her.
"I wish we could tell you more," he said. "But we've been figuring out this whole werewolf thing on our own. None of us were bitten. We don't know if that's real or not. And we don't know what's going to happen to you. But we, I, will protect you."
Stasia took a deep breath and nodded. Owen leaned forward and kissed her forehead. He wanted to do more than that. He wanted to hide her away from the rest of this group until they had more information about what was going to happen. But he had a feeling she wasn't going to allow herself to be hidden away.
Her face was completely blank, and then she blinked and gave him a brave smile. "So I might be turning into a werewolf. Great. Does anyone have snacks?"
Chapter Twenty-One
Stasia wasn't sure how much longer she could put on a brave face. Werewolves. Freaking werewolves. Her shoulder twinged in response to the bite she was trying hard not to think about, and she couldn't help but wonder if she would be howling at the moon soon enough.
She and Em escaped to the exam room to take a few minutes for themselves now that they had the story from Owen. Everyone else had agreed with his retelling, so she figured it wasn't too far off from the truth.
A warlock had turned them into werewolves in some sort of magic ritual in the Black Forest in Germany. She knew a fairytale when she heard one, but considering she had seen a man turn into a wolf with her own two eyes, she believed it. It didn't matter that her medically-trained brain was protesting that it was impossible. She'd seen it and there was no way it was a trick.
She sank down into one of the chairs in the exam room as Em leaned against the counter. Stasia couldn't stand for another minute. Her legs were shaky and she felt perched on the edge of a panic attack. It was only her sister's presence that was keeping her sane at the moment.
"How are you holding up? Em asked. She reached for something on the counter, the small container into which Stasia had dumped the bullet that had hit Vega, and started switching it from hand to hand, fidgeting. It was an old habit of hers, one she only fell back on when she was nervous.
The container wasn't a toy and it certainly wasn't sanitary, but Stasia couldn't think about that right now.
"I really don't know." She had seen weird things before. That came with the kind of upbringing she had and the job she'd gone into. Plenty of weird shit ended up in the ER. But she had never imagined werewolves.
How was she supposed to react? Was she supposed to get mad at Owen for lying to her? Could she? When would that conversation have even come up? Before they fucked? It wasn't like he thought lycanthropy was a sexually transmitted disease. And there was no way she would have believed him anyway.
"It's kind of cool, right?" Em didn't sound so sure as she spoke, but there was a bit of childish wonder underlying her tone.
"Cool?" That was one word. Though Stasia's childhood obsessions had run more towards vampires than werewolves. But it was one thing to fantasize about the otherworldly and something completely different to find out it was real.
"I mean, yeah. Your boyfriend is like a superhero or something." She set the container down and picked up one of the tools lying on the counter and poked at the bullet.
Was he her boyfriend? Stasia didn't deny it, even if they probably needed to have a talk. More than one. "What are you doing?" She pushed out of the chair and came to stand close to Em to see what she was looking at. And she was relieved when her sister didn't back away. It hadn't even occurred to Stasia to fear that, but now she realized her sister might be afraid. "You're not freaked out I might turn into a monster, are you?"
Em laughed. "I’ve seen you PMSing. I know exactly how much of a monster you can be." She picked up the bullet with a clean set of forceps and inspected it. "Do you have something to wash this off?"
"Why?" Stasia asked as she found what her sister needed. Em had always had an inquisitive mind and she probably would have been an investigator of some kind if she hadn't become a popstar.
"They were freaked out about it. I'm going to assume that they don't normally deal with this kind of thing. And if the legends are anything to go by, shouldn't they have a super healing factor or something? This was a tiny little bullet. Even a human could have shaken that off." She put the container down on the table and took a package of saline that Stasia found sitting on the counter. She washed off the blood to reveal the spent bullet.
It looked like a bullet. But Stasia wasn't sure it was just a bullet. She hadn't dealt with many gunshot wounds. And those that she had, she hadn't finished the bullet out. It often caused more damage to even try.
"There's something extra on here," Em said as she picked up the washed off bullet with the forceps and brought it close to her face.
"What do you mean?" How could there be something extra on a bullet?
"Look." Em shook the forceps a little as if that would give Stasia a clue. "It almost looks like it fused with something."
"You're looking at the bullet?" They both jumped as Rowe interrupted them. He was standing in the open doorway and watching them curiously.
It wasn't like they had anything to hide, even if Stasia felt like maybe they should. "We're working on the assumption that you guys heal faster than normal people," she said. "Would I be right about that?" Given the way Vega healed the second the bullet was out of him, it had to be true.
Rowe nodded and came fully into the room. "We've had some reckless play, trying to figure out our limits. It takes a lot of damage to keep us down."
"So not just one bullet?" asked Em.
"That would be correct."
"What about a silver bullet?" she asked, waving the forceps with more trust than Stasia had in them. "Or a bullet with silver stuff on it."
"What?" That got Rowe all the way across the room to look closer at the bullet. "You think someone shot a silver bullet at us?"
Em shrugged. "Or maybe it hit something silver before it hit Vega?" she suggested. "Maybe a fork or a candlestick?"
Rowe thought for a moment as he looked at the tiny piece of metal that had almost killed his friend. "There were silver candlesticks around us, so it's possible the bullet went through one and fused with the silver." He took the forceps from Em and got a better look at the bullet.
He dropped it onto his hand and flinched as it touched his skin, then he curled his fingers around it and held tight for about five seconds before tossing it back into the container. When he opened his hand back up, there was a red welt that kind of looked like a mosquito bite.
"I was expecting something a little bit more dramatic," Stasia admitted. Going by the movies his skin should have been ghastly, not just minorly irritated. Of course, she wasn't living in a movie.
Row gave a little laugh. "Me too, honestly. That's why I flinched. We’ve played with silver. How could we not? We're freaking werewolves. But it's really hard to find silver weaponry and it's kind of soft metal. But maybe someone figured something out. I have to tell this to Gibson." Rowe picked up the container with the bullet in it.
"Of course." Stasia probably would have told the boss herself if she'd had a few more minutes to think about it. "This is the first major medical issue you've had, isn't it?" Stasia asked. It hurt her to think that it could have been Owen lying on that table. She didn't know the rest of them very well but they seemed nice enough. Now she understood why they couldn't go to a hospital.
Rowe nodded. "It's mostly been cuts and bruises," he said. "I have enough medic training to handle that. And we heal fast enough that I usually don't need to. There was a bout of food poisoning, too. But again, we get better."
"You have. So far. But what if I hadn't gotten that bullet out of Vega?" She didn't know if the bullet could have killed him. She didn't know anything. But already her doctor brain was working hard to think about the things that this pack needed. And an actual trained physician could do them a lot of good.
"Maybe you should talk to Gibson about that," Rowe suggested. "I'm going to go talk to him about the bullet now. Do you two need anything?"
They didn't. Rowe left them alone and Stasia sat back down. Maybe it was time to think about how to put her skills to use in a new field.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Owen was ready to tear the office apart looking for Stasia. First he demanded that Rowe tell him where she was, but Rowe didn't know. Em was by herself in the kitchen, and no one else had answers.
Owen's wolf threatened to take over and use his superior senses to hunt her down, but he wasn't about to do that. Not right now. He had a feeling that Stasia had enough of wolves for one day and she wouldn't be eager to see him in his other form.
